Standfirst: Anthrax frontman Joey Belladonna, 66, sang The Star-Spangled Banner before the Seattle Seahawks vs Chicago Bears game on ESPN Monday Night Football on Monday, November 2, at Lumen Field in Seattle, in front of about 69,000 fans. Wearing a Seahawks jersey, the heavy-metal vocalist delivered a powerful rendition that split opinion online, with some fans criticising the high-pitched delivery and others defending it and praising the performance.
A metal frontman takes on the anthem
The performance came before the Seahawks hosted the Bears on Monday Night Football, one of the biggest regular stages in American sports television. Monday Night Football on ESPN draws a national audience, and the pregame anthem is one of the few moments in the broadcast when a single performer stands alone in front of the crowd. For that slot, the Seahawks turned to a singer best known for a very different kind of stage: Joey Belladonna, the frontman of the thrash-metal band Anthrax.
Belladonna performed at Lumen Field in Seattle, the Seahawks’ home stadium, in front of about 69,000 fans. He wore a Seahawks jersey for the occasion, a visible sign of support for the home team that is customary for anthem performers at NFL games. The Seahawks’ official site confirms the performance, making it a matter of record rather than rumor: the team itself announced and documented that Belladonna would sing, and did sing, the anthem before kickoff.
The choice of a metal singer for the anthem is not as unusual as it might first appear. The national anthem has been performed by singers from nearly every genre, from pop and country to rock and classical, and each brings a different vocal style to a song that is famously difficult to sing. Its wide range and its long, exposed phrases leave little room to hide, which is why anthem performances are so often debated afterward. A singer known for power and high notes will inevitably sound different from one known for restraint, and audiences tend to have strong feelings about which approach fits the song.
Why this performance drew attention
Belladonna’s delivery was powerful and high-pitched, in line with the vocal style that made him famous with Anthrax. Anthrax, formed in the early 1980s, became one of thrash metal’s defining bands, and Belladonna’s voice, with its range and force, has been central to the band’s sound for decades. Bringing that voice to The Star-Spangled Banner meant the anthem would not sound like a conventional, understated rendition. It would sound like Joey Belladonna singing it, and that was precisely what divided listeners.
Some fans online criticised the performance, focusing on the powerful, high-pitched delivery. Critics of that style tend to argue that the anthem should be sung in a more traditional, restrained manner, and that a forceful, high-register approach distracts from the song itself. That view was clearly present in the online reaction to Monday night’s performance, with some viewers saying the rendition did not suit the occasion.
Others took the opposite view. Defenders of the performance praised it, arguing that Belladonna sang the anthem with genuine power and conviction and that his delivery honored the song rather than undermining it. Supporters also pointed out that a singer should be allowed to bring his own voice to the anthem, rather than imitating a style that is not his own. The split was sharp: the same qualities that some listeners criticised were the ones others celebrated.
Belladonna’s history with the anthem
Belladonna is not new to this kind of spotlight. He has sung the national anthem at sporting events before, so Monday night was not his first time standing alone in a stadium with tens of thousands of people listening. That experience matters, because the anthem is one of the most exposed performances in music. There is no band behind the singer, no backing track to lean on, and no second take. The singer stands alone, and every note is heard clearly by the crowd and the television audience.
Belladonna has said he likes to keep the anthem traditional, a point that adds an interesting layer to the debate over his performance. A singer who aims for a traditional reading can still sound distinctive, because tradition in this context refers to respecting the melody and the words, not to sounding like every other singer. Belladonna’s traditional intent, combined with his naturally powerful voice, produced a rendition that was both faithful to the song and unmistakably his own.
He has also said that singing alone is tense, an honest admission that captures what makes the anthem such a daunting assignment. Most singers perform with a band, a backing group, or at least the safety of a familiar arrangement. The anthem strips all of that away. The performer is alone, the song is unforgiving, and the audience is enormous. Even experienced singers feel the pressure, and Belladonna’s acknowledgment of that tension is a reminder that the performance is a challenge for anyone who takes it on, regardless of genre.
The stage: Monday Night Football at Lumen Field
The setting amplified everything about the performance. Monday Night Football is one of the NFL’s flagship broadcasts, and a game between the Seahawks and the Bears carries its own history and audience. Lumen Field, known for its noise and atmosphere, holds a crowd that is famously loud and engaged. Singing the anthem in that environment means performing for a crowd that is already energized and ready for the game, as well as for the national television audience watching on ESPN.
Wearing the home team’s jersey is a small but meaningful detail. Anthem singers at NFL games often wear the home team’s colors, and it signals that the performer is part of the occasion rather than separate from it. Belladonna, in a Seahawks jersey, was visibly aligned with the home crowd, even as his musical background came from a world far removed from football’s usual pregame entertainment.
Why anthem performances split opinion so sharply
The debate over Belladonna’s anthem is part of a longer pattern. Because the anthem is so familiar, listeners judge performances against a personal ideal of how it should sound, and those ideals differ widely. Some listeners prefer a restrained, classical approach. Others prefer a powerful, emotional delivery. Some want the singer to stay close to the traditional melody, while others welcome personal interpretation. A single performance cannot satisfy all of those preferences at once.
Genre plays a role as well. When a singer from outside the mainstream pop or country world performs the anthem, some listeners hear the genre first and the song second. A metal vocalist will inevitably bring a different timbre and attack to the song than a pop singer would, and that difference alone can shape reactions. Supporters tend to hear authenticity: a singer being himself. Critics tend to hear a mismatch: a style that does not fit the occasion. Both reactions are really about the same thing, which is how much personal style a listener thinks the anthem should carry.
What happens next for the debate
For Belladonna, the performance adds another notable anthem appearance to a career already full of big stages. For the Seahawks, it adds another memorable pregame moment to a Monday night game that already had a national audience. And for fans, it adds another entry to the long-running conversation about how the anthem should be sung, a conversation that has no final answer and that flares up again with every high-profile performance.
The online reaction will likely fade as the football week moves on, but the pattern will repeat the next time a distinctive voice takes on the song. That is the nature of the anthem as a performance piece: it belongs to everyone who hears it, which means every rendition is judged by millions of personal standards at once. A powerful, high-pitched delivery from a metal frontman was always going to divide opinion, and on Monday night at Lumen Field, it did exactly that.
What is not in doubt is the basic record of the night. On Monday, November 2, Joey Belladonna, 66, sang The Star-Spangled Banner before the Seahawks vs Bears game on ESPN Monday Night Football at Lumen Field in Seattle, in front of about 69,000 fans, wearing a Seahawks jersey. The Seahawks’ official site confirms the performance. The rest, the praise, the criticism, and the debate over style, is a matter of opinion, and opinion, as Monday night showed, remains sharply split.
Sources: Seattle Seahawks official site (primary); Blabbermouth (secondary); Metalwani (secondary).
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